aside Guess Who’s Creating A Special Commission To Prevent Foreign Meddling In Its Elections”

TRUMP/ KOBACH

This is just too perfect. The republican US President Donald Trump and his administration have established the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,”which is chasing the the president’s “fake news” claim that he didn’t win the popular vote to be president because millions of Americans voted illegally; but in the meantime, nothing of any substance is being done to protect the states’ voting systems from being attacked/ manipulated by foreign governments like Russia. It was just this past month, that the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson testified at a US congressional that Russia attempted to penetrate the voting systems of 21 states and he predicted that it is likely that Russia will try this again in future U.S. elections.

What the US Commission recently has done, is mail a letter to every state in the Union seeking data from its voter rolls — including names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers. The request was done at the behest Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

There are 44 U.S. states’ officials who have indicated that either they will not comply at all or that they will comply in part.

What the US Commission recently has done, is mail a letter to every state in the Union seeking data from its voter rolls — including names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers. The request was done at the behest Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

There are 44 U.S. states’ officials who have indicated that either they will not comply at all or that they will comply in part.

SO WHILE, the U.S. White House is not adequately addressing the issue of US voter systems being vulnerable to future Russian cyber-attacks, Russia is.

ANDREI KLIMOV

Here is the rest of the story:

BELOW: The NPR reporter Lucien Kim in Moscow is the one asking the interview questions. The Russian Senator Andrei Klimov and the former U.S. Russian Ambassador Michael McFaul and Vladimir Milov, an adviser to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were the guests being interviewed.

On July 5, 2017, Lucian Kim of NPR posted the following transcript of an interview, titled, “Russia Aims To Guard Against Foreign Influence In Its Presidential Election.”

Excerpts:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, AS HOST WROTE INTRODUCTION:

“Let’s check in on the Senate. It’s formed a special commission on foreign meddling in elections. Meanwhile, the intelligence chief is holding closed-door briefings for lawmakers on the subject. This will all sound awfully familiar if you have been following recent events in Washington. But these events are unfolding in Russia, where election interference is suddenly getting a lot of attention ahead of that country’s presidential vote next year. NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Moscow.”

LUCIEN KIM

LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: “When Russian Senator Andrei Klimov looks out of his 13th-floor office, he sees Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador’s stately residence in downtown Moscow. Klimov is the head of the Russian Senate’s new commission to prevent foreign meddling.”

ANDREI KLIMOV: “This is not commission devoted to Mr. Trump or to Mr. Obama or to somebody else. This commission to prevent – to prevent interference from abroad in our internal affairs.”

KIM: “Klimov says that while U.S. lawmakers are obsessing over rumors and speculation about Russian meddling, his commission will deal with what he calls real interference, such as Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.”

KLIMOV: “They’d like to change our behavior, our visions, our soul, if you like, with the help of such kind of instruments. But it is useless, honestly.”

KIM: What constitutes meddling may be in the eye of the beholder. But many Russians now object to U.S. efforts to promote democracy in Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism. One of the people involved in that process was Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow.

MICHAEL MCFAUL: It wasn’t like we came under, you know, false passports and were handing money under the table. We were working closely with the Russian government officials.

KIM: McFaul says that during the 1990s, the Russian government viewed the Americans as partners. McFaul remembers first meeting Vladimir Putin, then a local official from St. Petersburg, during a conference sponsored by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. While McFaul acknowledges that the U.S. has intervened in the elections of other countries, he says there was no attempt to influence elections in Russia when he was ambassador to Moscow from 2012 to 2014.

MCFAUL: That is false. We did not do that. We had nothing to do with that.

KIM: That’s not what the Kremlin wants Russians to believe in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

Vladimir Milov

VLADIMIR MILOV: I think Putin and his lieutenants – they are deeply invested with the idea that any opposition movements in Russia must have only one origin, come from abroad.

MILOV: I think we’re on the Putin side in this regard. We are completely against any foreign interference. And this is our job to bring back democracy to Russia. So all this talk about international influence on whatever we do has been greatly exaggerated.

KIM: He says that Russians have heard all the stories about foreign meddling but are really interested in Russia’s economic problems and widespread corruption. Milov says there’s one thing the Russian opposition needs from the West, and that’s moral support. He says Donald Trump has been a disappointment.

RUSSIAN SENATE PALACE

MILOV: For two years, he essentially never said a bad word about Putin’s regime, about our dictatorship, about the way they brutalize people in Russia, have political prisoners – not a bad word.

KIM: The silver lining, Milov says, is the Kremlin will have a hard time portraying the opposition as foreign agents, since Putin is closer to Trump than his opponents are. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.

We have been interfering in Russian domestic politics since the 1990’s. We just tend to be more open about it. For years, US has been funding media outlets like Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America which reach Russian listeners. Of course, the Russians perceive this as an anti-Putin propaganda campaign..

The Russian government has the advantage because they heavily censor Russian media outlets to be pro-Russian and pro-Putin. Those who dissent seem to disappear.

Per Putin, Trump accepts Putin’s answer that he did not interfere in the elections. The intelligence community said not only did they did it, but Putin ordered it. That is consistent with the understanding that Putin controls all cyber tactics. The saga continues.

Agreed. Putin is showing Trump how to look like a democracy but be an authoritarian government underneath. I have a darker theory that this is more than about money. I fear this is about addressing the changing demographics in America where whites are a plurality not a majority. This is the reason Bannon and Miller are advisors. I hope I am wrong on this darker theory. Keith